Increasingly in today's society there is a need for individuals to “stay in touch,” whether it be with business contacts, co-workers, friends or family. A primary avenue for allowing individuals to stay in touch are the telephone networks, both landline or wireless. These telecommunication methods have their drawbacks, however. Significantly, if an individual is not sufficiently proximate to their telephone, the individual cannot answer an incoming call before it stops ringing, in which case the call often goes unanswered. The advent of answering machines and voice messaging systems have ameliorated this problem, but even these technological advancements are not acceptable for all situations. Some circumstances simply require more personal communication capabilities.
One known solution to this problem is the so-called “simultaneous ring” telephone service. According to the typical simultaneous ring service, when a called party receives an incoming call on their landline telephone, a wireless telephone associated with the called party would ring relatively simultaneously, allowing the called party to answer the most accessible phone. For example, a person may have the simultaneous ring service established for his work phone, such that whenever a calling party calls him at work, not only does his work phone ring, but also his wireless telephone may ring. As a result, the businessman need not miss any important work-related calls when he is out of the office.
There are a number of known mechanisms for implementing the simultaneous ring service. One is a switch-based system. In a switch-based system, an incoming call to a pre-designated directory number is additionally routed to a number of other pre-designated directory numbers. For example, an incoming call to the businessman's work phone may also be additionally routed to the businessman's home and/or mobile phones. The switch-based systems, however, treat each call the same. Accordingly, when one of the other pre-designated directory numbers is for a mobile phone, the system cannot account for inherent delays in wireless networks when connecting calls to mobile end users. As a result, a disgruntled calling party is likely to hear an unacceptable number of rings from a landline telephone before the mobile end user is able to answer. Alternatively, an answering system for the landline phone may answer before the mobile end-user can answer, thus precluding realization of the very benefits that the simultaneous ring service was intended to provide. A switch supporting such a service is available from NORTEL NETWORKS of Research Triangle Park, N.C.
These switch-based systems also suffer from a number of other serious problems. First, a subscriber is only able to activate or deactivate the simultaneous ring service from their landline telecommunications unit. The subscriber cannot activate or deactivate the service from a wireless telephone. Moreover, because the service is switch-based, the service cannot take into account the timing delays associated with wireless networks and cannot start a call to a wireless network prior to starting a call to a telephone number on a wired network. Accordingly, these systems cause outgoing telephone calls to landline telecommunications units to be placed prior to the calls to wireless telecommunications units. Therefore, the telephones are not simultaneously rung. Moreover, because these prior systems are switch-based, they cannot check the status of wireless telephones to be simultaneously rung prior to entering call setup. This may result in the unnecessary use of network resources. Additionally, prior art switch-based systems are limited to ringing a maximum of five wireline or wireless telephones. It is often desirable to have more than five phones simultaneously rung.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a simultaneous ring service that can simultaneously ring any number of wireline or wireless telephone lines. There also exists a need for such a service that effectively interfaces with wireless networks and accounts for delays in these networks. There further exists a need for such a service that may be administered by the subscriber from any wired or wireless telephone unit.